With the sun shining over Manchester this week, it’s safe to say that the mood at TMO HQ has been pretty high this week! As a result, we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring examples of great meme marketing from a range of different brands, including Virgin Media’s ‘success kid’. That in mind, we have felt inspired to create our very own infographic on how to create the perfect meme for your business or brand. Go on, take a look below!

Don’t forget, when used well, memes can work wonders for your business or brand across many social media networks. Not sure where to start? Why not contact one of our team to find out more about social media advertising on: 0161 968 2079.

Standing out on social media can be a challenge for a brand. With image-based platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and SnapChat growing rapidly, the power of visual content is becoming increasingly important and as a result, a crucial part of marketing activities.

By adapting to and leveraging a visually driven approach and implementing this into your social media brand strategy, both new and established brands can benefit from the opportunities this avenue offers.

From generating a better understanding, increasing engagement and grabbing consumers’ attention, our infographic explores the key elements of incorporating visual into your social branding and strategy to encourage success.

Communicating with your customers, clients or potential consumers is no good if the message you’re trying to communicate isn’t retained by your audience.

In the battle of social feeds, emails, blogs and websites, it’s easy for information to get lost or ignored if it’s not easy to digest. Part of this comes from good, quality content writing; the other part comes from making use of visual content to help boost how much your audience remembers and engages with your message.

It’s worth considering implementing the following kinds of visual content to communicate more quickly, more strongly and more memorably with your audiences.

Images on Social Media

Social engagement is continually growing in strength, with more brands and business than ever implementing social as part of their online marketing strategy.

Social platforms provide, for the most part, a steady and constant stream of information, news and updates. Making sure your content is highly shareable should be a priority if you’re looking to generate engagement and leads through social channels, so building up an arsenal of images you can accompany posts and tweets with is an important step to social success.

Effective images should evoke a response from those that view them, so you need to think carefully about the response you want to elicit. Stephanie Hatch, Social Media and Email Marketing Specialist in MIT’s Communication Production Services, notes that there are three types of responses:

Emotional: Images can elicit any of a range of feelings, from awe to amusement to sadness. The emotion doesn’t have to be positive to create a connection.

Mental: An image can make its mark by challenging, instructing or informing.

Social: People tuned in to trends and memes, who have a pop-culture awareness, may respond to images that play on that awareness. Social responses can also be cultural: an image that speaks to a Finnish audience won’t necessarily resonate with Fijians.

Images that contain references to current events, interesting statistics and inspirational quotes often do well for sharing, but you need to make share they’re on-brand and relevant.

Think carefully about the message you want to convey and the business objective behind it. Carefully consider your audience and how they will respond to ensure you successfully capture their attention.

Infographics

We’re big fans of infographics at The Media Octopus and have designed a bunch of them to help share tips and guides on a variety of things. They’re a useful tool for communicating more complex information, data and knowledge quickly, clearly and memorably, so are a powerful tool for businesses to consider.

Infographics play on our ability to remember information we’ve seen more than we’ve read by combining images, colours, flowing movement and content in an eye-catching format.

You’ll need time to gather and organise the information you’d like to share initially, but in the long-run, a well-designed infographic can help to reinforce your brand awareness and expertise especially as they’re so shareable.

It’s important to research the infographics that are already out there. Don’t waste time creating something that’s already been done. If you’re creating an infographic, it should be unique – even if its covering a similar topic to what’s already out there, take a fresh perspective to boost its potential.

Make sure any infographics you create fit in with your brand’s general visual style, feature your logo and clearly has your contact information so that wherever they end up being shared on the world wide web they drive traffic and leads back to you.

Video Content

Video is slowly starting to take over the online world as an engagement tactic as its power of persuasion is perhaps the strongest of the bunch.

Video appeals not only to the brain’s visual systems, but also to its auditory systems, eliciting an emotional bond that can directly influence a person’s choices and actions, making it a powerful delivery tool if done right. According to Quicksprout, video content increases people’s understanding of products and services by 74%, while 80% of internet users remember the video ads they watch online. They’re decent numbers to be invested in.

Video content is vastly different to blog posts, social media and infographics in that videos utilise text, moving images and sound simultaneously and therefore requires more skill to execute.

Good ideas for visual content in the form of video include promotions of physical products and services; creative, humorous and unique content; providing instructions, and imparting information. If your brand or business has its strengths in any of these then video may be a viable option for you to invest in.

It’s not always an appropriate medium for all content goals, and if you find that you’re trying to convert content into a video, rather than developing an organic idea for a video, you may need to re-evaluate whether it’s worth the effort to produce.

If full videos aren’t going to work for you, then many brands are jumping on newer social media platforms for video such as Vine and Instagram Video to engage with audiences using short and snappy behind-the-scenes, how-to and stop motion videos and ads that require less skill to pull together. It will still need some time and energy invested in it, but it may be an easier option to get started with.

Spend some time investigating video content and its various emerging forms and analyse which – if any – would best suit your brand and message. It may be that video isn’t for you.

Need Help With Your Visual Content?

Being big believers in the power of aesthetics, visual content plays a big role in The Media Octopus’ ability to connect with businesses and consumers alike. With consumers being visual for the most part, in their consumption of media, we integrate elements of design and visual communication into everything we do.

If you’d like help with your brand’s or business’ visual content, why not get in touch and see what we can do for you?

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Manchester is one of the most unique cities on the planet. Its attitude to life and its view of the world around it are like no other. We love Manchester and to show off our undying affection, we made you something pretty for Manchester Day.